Johnny Ludlow, Third Series

by Mrs. Henry Wood

It was a room chiefly used by commercial travellers. Dolly’s attention was caught by something over the mantelpiece. In a small glass-case, locked, there was the portrait of a man cleverly done in pencil; by its side hung a plain silver watch with a seal and key attached to a short black ribbon: and over all was a visiting-card, inscribed in ink, “Mr. Gardner.” Dolly looked at this and turned sick and faint: it was her father’s likeness, her father’s watch, seal, and ribbon. Of an excitable nature, she burst into tears, and the barmaid ran in. There and then, the mystery so long hanging about Robert Grape’s fate was cleared up, so far as it ever would be in this world.

He had left Bridgenorth, as may be remembered, on the Thursday morning. Towards the evening of the following day, Friday, as Dolly now heard, he appeared at this very inn. This same barmaid, an obliging, neat, and modest young woman, presenting a rare contrast to the barmaids of the present day, saw him come in. His face had a peculiar, grey shade upon it, which attracted her notice, and she asked him if he felt ill. He answered that he felt pretty well then, but supposed he must have had a fainting-fit when walking into the town, for to his surprise he found himself on the grass by the roadside, waking up from a sort of stupor. He engaged a bedroom for the night, and she thought he said—but she had never been quite sure—that he had come to look out for a horse at the fair to be held in Gloucester the next day. He took no supper, “not feeling up to it,” he said, but drank a glass of weak brandy-and-water, and ate a biscuit with it, before going up to bed. The next morning he was found dead; had apparently died quietly in his sleep. An inquest was held, and the medical men testified that he had died of heart disease. Poor Dolly, listening to this, wondered whether the pitch out of the gig at Bridgenorth had fatally injured him.

“We supposed him to be a Mr. Gardner,” continued the barmaid, “as that card”—pointing to it—“was found in his pocket-book. But we had no clue as to who he was or whence he came. His stockings were marked with a ‘G’ in red cotton; and there was a little loose money in his pocket and a bank-note in his pocket-book, just enough to pay the expenses of the funeral.”

“But that likeness,” said Dolly. “How did you come by it? Who took it?”

“Ah, ma’am, it was a curious thing, that—but such things do not happen by chance. An idle young man of the town used to frequent our inn; he was clever at drawing, and would take off a likeness of any one near him with a few strokes of a pen or pencil in a minute or two, quite surreptitious like and for his own amusement. Wonderful likenesses they were. He was in the bar-parlour, this very room, ma’am, while the stranger was drinking his brandy-and-water, and he dashed off this likeness.”

“It is exactly like,” said poor Dolly. “But his name was Grape, not Gardner. It must have been the card of some acquaintance.”

“When nobody came forward to identify the stranger, the landlord got the sketch given up to him,” continued the young woman. “He put it in this case with the watch and seal and card, and hung it where you see, hoping that sometime or other it might be recognized.”

“But did you not let it be known abroad that he had died?” sighed Dolly.

“Why, of course we did; and put an advertisement in the Gloucester papers to ask if any Mr. Gardner was missing from his friends. Perhaps the name, not being his, served to mislead people. That’s how it was, ma’am.”

So that the one disappearance, that of Robert Grape, was now set at rest.